


Consequences

by Small_Hobbit



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1862505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/pseuds/Small_Hobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson has returned to 221B, but the circumstances of his return mean that it is not turning out in the way he had hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to ImpishTubist, who not only beta-ed this, but encouraged me along the way.

John Watson opened the door when he heard the knock.

“Come in, Greg. Do you want some coffee? I’ve just put the kettle on.”

“Thank you, yes. Sherlock around?”

“He’s in his room. Do you want me to call him for you?”

“Nah. He’ll know I’m here.”

Greg accepted the mug of coffee. “Have you heard anything from Mary?” he asked.

“No.” John’s dejected expression was impossible to miss. “Nothing in the last two weeks.”

“I’m sorry, mate.”

John merely nodded and then brightened up as Sherlock came out of his bedroom.

“Coffee, Sherlock?” he asked.

“No, I’m going out.”

“Oh! Where?”

“Seeing a friend.”

“But you don’t have friends.”

“Actually, I do. Lestrade, if you come with me I can tell you what you need to know on the way.”

John watched miserably as the other two left and he was on his own again. He picked the newspaper up and was engrossed in reading the back pages when there was another knock on the door and Mrs Hudson came in.

“I wondered if you had the money for the room, dear.”

“Next week, Mrs Hudson.”

“Only, you did agree when you moved back two weeks ago that you would pay me rent for it.”

“As I said, next week.”

“Right.”

He didn’t wait for her to leave before opening his laptop and clicking on one of his favourite sites, searching for a way to forget his loneliness.

***

After a while, John slammed the laptop lid down. He switched on the television and turned the volume up to drown out the silence around him. He wasn’t expecting Sherlock to be late back, since he presumed the friend in question was part of Sherlock’s homeless network, with Sherlock using the term loosely to avoid Greg asking unwanted questions. He would wait for Sherlock to return and then they could discuss the latest case.

He woke with a start when Sherlock came into the flat.

“Hi,” he said, “You’re later than I expected.”

“As I told you, I went to see a friend, we spent the evening together.”

Sherlock made as if to head straight to his own room.

“Can I get you a drink?” John asked.

“No. Did you give Mrs Hudson your rent?”

“I told her I’d pay her next week.”

“You’ve been gambling again.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Don’t lie to me. The paper’s creased on the racing page; there’s a scratch mark on the table where you’ve slammed your laptop down, which means you’ve lost again; and you can’t pay your rent. Even Anderson would recognise the signs.”

“You don’t understand,” John yelled. “You needed me, so I came back and now all you do is shout at me. I’m going to bed.”

***

The following day John went into work. He checked his phone between patients, but there was nothing from Sherlock. His room was next to the surgery manager’s office and he could hear her phone ringing every so often. Occasionally she would leave her office, in response to the call, and every time that happened John readied himself for it to be Sherlock demanding that he join him immediately. But each time she walked further down the corridor, ignoring him.

By the time he returned to Baker Street he was disappointed. He had expected to be attending cases with Sherlock and so far little had happened. He had tagged along on a couple of occasions, but the first time Sherlock had been uncharacteristically quiet and the second time, having told Dimmock “it should be obvious even to you what happened here”, Sherlock had departed by himself, telling John he would be back later.

He let himself into 221B and was surprised to see Greg there.

“Hi, John, how’s your day been?” Greg asked.

“Same old, same old,” he replied. “Is Sherlock in?”

“No, he should be back soon though. He said to meet him here.”

“Right!”

John was tired and didn’t feel up to making polite conversation, so he opened his laptop and glanced at his emails, then slammed the lid shut again.

He glanced up to see Greg looking curiously at him.

“Sherlock’s not going to be back for a while,” John said, “So if it’s all the same to you, I suggest you don’t stay. I’d prefer some peace at the moment.”

Greg shrugged. “Okay. If there’s anything I can do to help, you will let me know, won’t you.”

“Yes. But unless you can get my wife back, then there isn’t anything anyone can do.”

Once again he felt Greg looking at him quizzically, almost as if he was a potential suspect. But the detective didn’t say anything else and left the flat without another glance, so John put it down to his own tiredness.

He went into the kitchen thinking he should start to prepare something to eat, but there was very little in the cupboards, so he decided to wait for Sherlock to return before ordering a takeaway.

Twenty minutes later Sherlock returned. John greeted him warmly.

“Lestrade not here?” Sherlock asked.

“No, he left.”

Sherlock pulled his phone out of his pocket, read a text, nodded and put his phone away again.

“Shall we order a takeaway?” John asked.

“You go ahead. I’ve got to go back out.”

“Oh, but, I was thinking we’d have Thai. If I get some you could eat it later.”

“Don’t bother!” And with that Sherlock was gone.

There was no point ordering a takeaway for one, so John went downstairs to see if he could borrow some bread from Mrs Hudson. He was surprised to find her door locked, although he did recall Sherlock telling her it was important that she keep herself safe. He knocked on the door, but unfortunately her hearing had deteriorated, as she couldn’t hear him above the television. He went back upstairs, thinking that he’d have a cup of black tea.

***

Sherlock found Greg in the pub. “I got your text,” he said.

“I was unwelcome, so I decided to wait for you here instead.”

Sherlock nodded and took his phone out of his pocket as he felt the vibration of another text. He glanced at it, and sent a quick reply.

“That was Mrs Hudson to say John had been hammering on her door” he said.

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, she’d locked the door, as I’d told her to do and ignored him.”

“Do you think he’s a threat to her?”

“Not physically. If that was the case then I wouldn’t let him stay. I just don’t think it’s wise to allow him access to her flat since she discovered money missing from her purse.”

“I presume there’s no proof it was him?” Greg asked.

“No. And if challenged he’d probably say that she was an old lady and had forgotten that she’d already spent it.”

“Which would be plausible if it was a couple of quid, but you said it was thirty pounds.”

“And twenty the time before.”

They paused as the waitress brought Greg his pie and chips.

“I didn’t order you anything,” Greg said. “I presumed you wouldn’t want to eat.”

“You presumed correctly,” Sherlock said, taking one of the chips.

“So what happens next?” Greg asked.

“I think that depends on whether or not John acknowledges that there is a problem. I had a long email from Mary today. She said she’d tried texting, phoning and emailing him and she’s had no response of any kind.”

“He told me he hadn’t heard anything.”

“Hmmm. Did you believe him?”

“I thought it unlikely that she hadn’t tried to contact him.”

“Exactly. She also provided as much detail as she could about his gambling debts, which are much as I thought.”

“Does she know when he started to get into debt?” Greg asked.

“She knew he was gambling in the last few weeks before the baby was due, but she was keeping an eye on things and he wasn’t out of his depth. But then with the problems with the birth she was in hospital for five days and he seems to have spent all his time when he wasn’t with her in the bookmakers or gambling online.”

“And it doesn’t take long for debt to mount up,” Greg said grimly.

“She blames herself that she didn’t realise the scale of the problem once she was home, but he was clearly covering things up and she was involved with caring for a new baby. The first time she knew there was a problem was when a debt collector called. She didn’t have any cash, so he left, saying that he’d be back the next day. At that point she was upset, rather than frightened. She asked John about it that night, but wasn’t exactly reassured when he said there must have been a misunderstanding.”

“Classic behaviour.”

“Precisely. Anyway, she didn’t have the energy to pursue the matter and decided to see if anything more came of it. However, partway through the following morning she received a phone call from the practice manager at the surgery, asking her how she was. She said she was fine, but it would be nice to have time to get dressed before lunch, to which the manager said that she had understood there were problems, because John had taken a few days off, despite having finished his paternity leave. Mary had hurriedly made an excuse saying that she’d been finding the lack of sleep very difficult and John had wanted to be sure she didn’t get post-natal depression and rung off. About an hour later she’d heard someone banging on the door and shouting to open it. This was very different from the debt collector of the previous day, so she’d ignored it. Her instinct had told her that whoever it was would be back with reinforcements, so she’d grabbed the essentials and left.”

“A wise decision.”

Sherlock nodded. He remembered the text he’d received from Mary just over two weeks previously, saying “I need to get away urgently. Can you help?” The very fact that she’d contacted him showed how desperate she was.

One quick phone call to Greg: “Does your cousin still take in lodgers?”

“Yes.”

“Great, can you tell her I’m sending someone to her this afternoon?”

“Sure, what name?”

“Mary Watson.”

Stunned silence, followed by “Right. Will do.”

A second phone call to arrange transport and he’d been able to text Mary back with details of where to meet him and confirmation that it was all arranged. He’d not asked her anything, beyond checking whether there were instructions for something she needed him to do in London and ensuring that she had enough cash to keep her going. He had reasoned that she would tell him whatever was necessary and otherwise he was at liberty to deduce what had happened.

Sherlock’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a third man, who leaned in to Sherlock and gave him a quick kiss, before holding his hand out to Greg. “Nice to see you again.”

“You too, Victor. I’m about to get another pint, what can I get you?”

“It’s okay, I’ll go. Sherlock, do you want anything?”

Sherlock shook his head, so Victor went to the bar to get two pints, whilst Sherlock turned back to Greg. “I’ve told Victor about Mary’s email. She’d said she was happy for me to share it with the two of you. She’s prepared to come back at any time, but needs to know it’s safe for the baby.”

Victor returned with the pints. “Sherlock says you’ve had some more information.”

“You appreciate this is all confidential,” Greg said.

“I’m not known for sharing information inappropriately,” Victor replied with a grin.

“I didn’t think you would be. Makes me happier to say it though.”

“But of course.”

“As you know,” Greg continued, “four days after John came back to Baker Street, a body was discovered in a covered bin in Burdett Street, not far from Waterloo Station. It was the corpse of one Thomas Grimes, known as an enforcer for Donald Crane. Conventional wisdom would be that Crane had arranged for one of his other boys to eliminate Grimes, presumably for disobeying orders. However, this wasn’t his regular M.O. In addition, there were none of the usual whispers going round to say that he’d had it coming.”

“You considered the possibility of another gang trying to muscle in on Crane?” Victor asked.

“Again, no whispers of anything. Which was why I brought Sherlock in on a case that he wouldn’t normally consider.”

“And I probably wouldn’t have taken it, but for suspicions that I was starting to have,” Sherlock said. “I had gained the impression that John was gambling and that he had been borrowing money from an illegal source. Crane is one of the major money lenders at the moment and I thought that if John realised the sort of people he was getting involved with it might shock him sufficiently to stop. I suggested that John accompany me on this case, but without telling him what it was about. We met Lestrade at the scene of the crime. I didn’t expect to be able to find anything. It was three days after Grimes had been murdered, so everything of use had already been obliterated.”

“Initially no-one thought it was anything more than a run of the mill death, either within or between gangs,” Greg added in explanation to Victor as Sherlock glared at him. Greg wasn’t bothered; he knew that Sherlock wouldn’t have come out for anything so prosaic.

“So,” Sherlock continued, “I gave a cursory glance around, but what suddenly interested me was John’s reaction. Firstly, he recognised the location, although he had never been there with me before, and there was no reason why he should have been there by himself. Had he done so for a legitimate reason, say to visit a patient, he would have mentioned it. I was processing this piece of information and therefore stayed silent. I would have expected John to be asking me questions about what I had deduced. He didn’t.”

“Did you suspect John at that point?” Victor asked.

“I thought his involvement with either Grimes or Crane was deeper than I had first suspected,” Sherlock replied. “But I lacked sufficient data to make further deductions.”

“Grimes had been killed by multiple stab wounds,” Greg said. “But the pathologist stated that he had previously been beaten. The angle of the wounds, plus the time between the beating and the stabbing, make the probability that these were committed by two different people quite high.”

Victor nodded.

“What we now know,” Greg continued “was that a man was heard shouting ‘You took my wife away, you bastard’ at some time that night. Unfortunately our, never very reliable, informant wasn’t sure at what point he heard it. Sometime between moving on time and first light.”

“Moving on time?” Victor asked.

“There’s a foot patrol comes along here between midnight and 1am, part of the police presence designed to reassure the good (for good read well-heeled) public, who are leaving the wine bars at that time of night, that the area is safe. The officers tell the dossers to move on; which they do – round the block and back to the same spot.”

“I presume they didn’t see anything?” Victor said.

Sherlock snorted. “Hardly likely.”

“That’s uncalled for,” Greg said. “Whilst they couldn’t confirm exactly who they had seen, the officers on that patrol did say that they recognised all the dossers they ‘moved on’ that night as being regulars. Whoever it was could have been on the main street and would easily have merged with the departing drinkers.”

“Who found the body?”

“We received an anonymous call. From the tape I’d guess it was someone who’d been scavenging in the bins and found more than they expected.”

“How come someone’s just told you what they heard?”

“No-one was prepared to say anything at first, thinking Crane was behind it. But it seems to be getting about that the death was unexplained, so our informant was prepared to come forward.”

“The words sound very much like something John would say,” Sherlock said. “But you don’t think he was the one who actually killed Grimes.”

“Correct. I could arrest him for GBH, but when I was discussing the case with my DCI earlier, he said he was only interested in the murderer and that he wasn’t wasting police resources on finding someone who had beaten up a dead enforcer, who probably had it coming to him.”

Victor nodded. “I can see why you have problems with your DCI.”

Greg looked at him. “I’ve never said anything.”

“No, but Sherlock has. He described him with rather uncomplimentary language.”

“You need our help,” Sherlock said.

“Yes. I think John may have seen something that night. He won’t come forward voluntarily, so I’m hoping he’ll talk to you.”

“No,” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock, look, I know he was your friend,” Greg began, but Sherlock silenced him.

“It’s time that he faces what’s going on. We confront him, the three of us together. Whether or not he has anything of use for you, Greg, he needs to be told the truth.”

Sherlock stood up, and the other two hastily downed the rest of their pints and followed him out of the pub.

***

When the three men reached 221B they found John sitting on the sofa in the semi-darkness. He looked up as they came in, but the smile that had begun when he saw Sherlock swiftly faded when he realised he was not alone.

“You didn’t order a takeaway, then?” Sherlock began.

“There was no point getting something just for myself.”

“Or you didn’t have any money to pay for one.”

“That’s uncalled for.”

“It’s the truth though.” Sherlock practically sneered.

“How dare you!”

John had stood up and raised his fist in order to punch Sherlock, but Victor was too quick for him, grabbing both his arms and forcing him back onto the sofa. John struggled, but Victor refused to release him, until John finally admitted defeat.

Sherlock and Greg pulled chairs towards John, while Victor sat next to him on the sofa, wary in case John again decided to end the argument with his fists.

Sherlock looked towards Greg, who began “What can you tell us about the night Thomas Grimes was killed?”

John looked blankly back. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Greg returned the look. “You can cut the crap. You saw Grimes that night. I don’t think you murdered him, but if you don’t tell us what you do know I _will_ arrest you on suspicion of murder.”

John turned appealingly to Sherlock, who looked impassively back. He leant back, apparently prepared to call Greg’s bluff. Greg started to stand up, but Victor motioned to him to wait a minute.

“Face it, mate,” Victor said. “This is probably your best chance to get your life back on track. Up to this point the only people who know are friends who will bat your wicket. If it goes any further, then it will become public domain and there’ll be no going back.”

“And who exactly are you?” John twisted himself round to glare at Victor.

“Sherlock’s boyfriend, partner, whatever you want to call it.”

“Oh!” John sank back into the sofa, suddenly looking defeated rather than aggressive. “Oh!”

“Yeah. You’ve been living a dream.”

“More of a nightmare.” John looked around at the three men who were watching him. “Shit!”

Victor spoke up. “Can I make a suggestion? John, I suspect you would find it easier to talk to a stranger, so why don’t you and I go and find somewhere to grab something to eat, somewhere neutral, and then you can tell Greg what you know when we come back.”

Victor looked at the others to see if they were happy with this. Sherlock nodded.

Greg said, “You’ll be okay by yourself?”

Victor’s smile had the hint of a tiger. “Told you before, I can take care of myself.”

John said, “That sounds good, but Sherlock is quite right – I’ve got no money.”

“I’ll pay. Just don’t suggest the Ritz.”

The two men departed, Sherlock opened his laptop and Greg moved to the sofa, switched the television on and prepared to fall asleep.

***

Greg woke with a start when the door opened and Victor walked in.

“Where’s John?” has asked.

“He’s on the stairs, talking to Mary.”

Join joined them a couple of minutes later, smiling. “She’s coming back tomorrow,” he said.

The he opened his wallet and handed his bank card and credit card to Sherlock. “Can you look after these until Mary gets back?”

“Of course.”

“And this.”

Sherlock looked curiously at the piece of paper John gave him. It was covered in figures, clearly setting out all the money John owed, including sums that he had ‘borrowed’ from people without their knowledge.

“Victor’s given me the name of a different therapist who I’m going to contact tomorrow morning to make an appointment to see,” John added. Then, turning to Greg he said, “I would prefer it if the following went no further, but I do realise that you may have to charge me. I’ve warned Mary of the possibility.”

Greg looked thoughtful. “If you’re about to tell me what I think you are, then I have to be honest and say that, whilst I doubt you would be charged, I don’t like the idea that you get off scot free for doing something that may well have contributed to a man’s death.”

John nodded. “Victor and I discussed that. Would it help if I volunteered at a night shelter for a period of time – you specify the period?”

“Yes, I’ll go with that.”

“Thank you. As you are probably aware I blamed Grimes for causing Mary to leave me. I’d heard that he was open to making private arrangements, so I got word to him that that was what I wanted to do. He agreed and we set up somewhere to meet. I was waiting for him when he arrived and attacked him, letting my fists express a lot of the anger I felt at the whole situation onto this one man. When I left him he was bruised and bloody, but most certainly alive.”

“But less in a position to resist his second attacker,” Greg commented dryly. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who that was?”

“If you mean did I see anything, then no.”

Sherlock looked keenly at John. “I thought Grimes worked with a partner. What would you have done had the two of them been there?”

“I got the impression when I set the meeting up that he didn’t want his partner knowing anything about it.”

“Right. So Grimes gets beaten up. Phones his partner to come and help him. Partner arrives, works out Grimes has been running deals without him and stabs him. Who was Grimes’ partner?”

“Grant Rothwell,” Greg replied. “He was routinely questioned, but knew nothing. I’ll get him back in and we can question him with regards to Grimes’ ‘private’ deals.”

Greg stood up to leave. John held out his hand to him. “I realise I’ve been an utter bastard lately, but I do intend to make amends.”

Greg looked at the outstretched hand and the expression on John’s face.

“Yeah, mate, I reckon you do.”

He shook John’s hand and then pulled him into a hug.

After Greg had left John turned to Victor and Sherlock. “I don’t know what to say to you both, except thank you. And now it’s late and I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, so I’m going to bed.”

Sherlock watched John go up the stairs and then looked at Victor. “Fancy staying the night?”

“Yeah, why not? You’ll have to be quiet though, or it won’t just be Mrs Hudson complaining about the noise.”

 


End file.
